


we're all strays on a sidewalk

by nereid



Series: Fem February 2021 [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Doctor Who (2005), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Multi, Stargirls Universe, can be read as platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:22:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29254398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereid/pseuds/nereid
Summary: Dawn brings home a stray.
Relationships: Clara Oswald/Amy Pond/Caroline Forbes/Dawn Summers/Cassandra Newton
Series: Fem February 2021 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2139975
Comments: 3
Kudos: 1
Collections: Stargirls Universe





	we're all strays on a sidewalk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kwritten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/gifts).



> For the fabulous fem february ficathon here which y'all wanna come check out [here](https://clockwork-hart1.dreamwidth.org/53291.html)
> 
> for kwritten's prompt: 
> 
> i found a stray  
> i think someone sent her to heaven on accident  
> i think someone wants her in hell on purpose  
> can i keep her?
> 
> will you help me fight this war?  
> anyway, she might be my helen and i might be her troy
> 
> but you're my achilles and i'm something like your patrocles
> 
> i found a stray on the sidewalk  
> i think she fell from heaven  
> i think we have to run away ... wanna ride shotgun?
> 
> K, there's no war here, but some of your prompt I did manage to take into consideration.

Magic can be many things. It is warm like pie when Clara bakes it, and like the blanket that Caroline puts over Amy and Dawn, cold feet interlocking to keep warm. A tangle of magic, pie, and blankets, and feet. Messy, but all theirs.

The old house is always filled with magic, and it is filled with mess, except when Caroline and Clara unite their powers of persuasion into making them all spend a weekend cleaning. There are many kinds of magic, all the women find out, in ways both unique and shared, and all of them play a part in keeping this house as it is. 

Some magic is like this: on this morning, on a Saturday, Caroline is talking on the phone, pacing back and forth throughout their backyard, a long, white cardigan billowing behind her as she walks. 

Amy steps out of the house and into the yard, and after observing the scene for a few moments, she asks Clara what this is about. When she asks, it's not really out loud, it's a look that goes from Clara to Caroline and back to Clara again, which is a silent conversation that Clara can follow with certainty only sharing a life with someone brings. Clara answers in a hushed "Work" and a mock eye roll, because mocking Caroline is allowed on Saturdays, when she has already recovered a bit from the work week, and is not yet actively collecting energy for the start of the next week. Amy repeats the eye roll, and passes a cup of tea to Clara. Dawn's out, been away for the weekend visiting Sunnydale, and whoever is away, it always upsets a balance a little, or actually, it takes a bit of time to create or re-create another balance. It didn't use to be four of them, after all, and they were fine even in a smaller pack. It was just Caroline and Dawn first, the girl made of blood and fangs, and Dawn, the mystical energy girl. Amy came next, the runaway girl who's stopped running for a bit at least, and then Clara, the girl who'd split herself a thousand ways and didn't even have blood to show for it. Every new moving part of their four-headed monster is a new adjustment, but it's how they like it, so it's how they keep it.

Amy and Clara continue discussing Caroline, while Caroline's voice grows louder and more urgent on the phone, and at some point she steps towards the two women sitting on the picnic blanket - is it a picnic blanket still, if it's laid out there from early spring to late autumn? - and steals a sip of hot tea, and both the girls repeat their eye rolling, at which point she stops her yelling for a second, leans down to take the entire cup of tea for herself, and backs away with the tea, to do a bit more yelling, and gesturing, now with a tea cup. It is around then that the porch produces a loud squeaking sound, which hasn't been heard in years, because all the women know where not to step on the squeaky old porch, and there's Dawn and a blonde woman, standing there like it's any other day of the week, and it's just them four, which clearly isn't the case on both counts.

"I found a stray. Can we keep her?" Dawn asks. Caroline says "I'm gonna have to call you back", Amy says "You're not taking my office space", Clara rolls her eyes at her because Clara is allowed to roll her eyes at Amy any time she wants, and finally Clara says: "Hi", while Dawn smiles like she is enjoying not only the effect she is having but also like she is enjoying having predicted it this accurately.

For a bit, there is silence. Looks are exchanged, and eyebrows raised, fingers tap against whatever skin they find, theirs or someone else's. Then Clara says, as posh as she can make Received Pronunciation sound these days - traveling across the universe doesn't influence your accent, courtesy of TARDIS's universal translator, but apparently moving across a comparably miniscule body of water will do wonders.

"As the oldest" Clara starts in a soft tone, and everyone else is quick to react, Dawn produces a scoff and says "Come on", Caroline says "We talked about this, you split yourself into parts. Remember when we were reading _A Memory Called Empire_? Continuity of memory is what matters". Amy starts to say "I'm actually - two thousand years -" and Dawn repeats her scoff, and adds a clearly fake cough to it, and adds a single word to it: "Key." 

The word, single as it is, seems to have a lot of weight. Because Clara says: "Okay, I didn't think everyone would get so worked up. We don't need to come off as complete lunatics, however, so how about we take it from where we are into a less-lunaticky direction?"

"Less-lunaticky?" Amy repeats, in an exaggeration of Clara's accent, her usual Scottish drawl abandoned for this instance, and then Amy looks at Clara accusatorily, finger pointed and all, and says: "Buffy's been rubbing off on you." This mention of Buffy gets some amount of reaction from everyone, but the biggest reaction comes out of Dawn, who says "Excuse me, I'm perfectly capable of being rubbed off of, thank you very much!" and Caroline, who is obviously going to be an agent of order in this chaos, moves to stand on Clara's left and adds her real weight to the symbolic weight of being on Clara's side.

"Less lunaticky, yes" Clara repeats, and takes Caroline's hand into hers.

"Okay, new-comer, hello. Is this an indoor or outdoor type of conversation?" Caroline asks, and now that petty grievances that need to be rehashed every once in a while have been properly rehashed, it's time to actually hear what this woman has to say, and perhaps even take a second look at her. She's tall - not taller than Amy, but no one is taller than Amy, at least not in this house. Her hair is blonde, so Caroline's not the only blonde at the moment, which might put some people off balance, but Caroline looks at the woman - girl? it's hard to gauge her age - and Caroline's not as easily put off balance as most people, so Caroline simply smiles. Clara's still the shortest, so she'll not particularly mind looking up to speak to yet another person. Probably. Balance preserved. Somewhat. Seemingly.

"Hi, I'm Cassandra. Well, Cassie, really?"

Amy turns to Clara immeaditely and her finger is on Clara's lips. "Please, no Cassandra references. We know, okay? We know." Dawn smirks.

Clara pretends to pout for a second, and then remembers she's trying to bring order, not chaos, into whatever's going on. So she opts for merely moving on, but not before pretending she's going to bite Amy's finger. Amy removes it swiftly, and Caroline rolls her eyes now, because she's losing ground in this attempt to keep things less lunaticky. She still thinks it's a fitting term.

"Cassie, what brings you to -" Amy starts to ask, but instead of giving this place where they are any name, she sort of flails her arms about, as if that makes anything any clearer than it was before her intervention.

Cassie starts to produce some sound which is not actually intelligible because then there's commotion again.

Obviously this will be a conversation, but not a regular one, one with a capital C, Conversation, so there's not actually going to be one immediately, because Conversations should be given due care and preparation. Cassie looks worn and tired and everyone knows this will be a process, so what actually happens before Cassie can answer this or any other questions is, Caroline repeats her previous question and asks if this is an outdoor or indoor conversation and Dawn says either is fine and Clara says she has leftover pie from yesterday but there's no tea left and Caroline says she's going to make coffee because this might be more of a coffee conversation and she turns to Cas to asks which one is it.

Cass says "Coffee", and Caroline brightens up: "Good taste in beverages", but it's not only Caroline, because everyone brightens up and starts to move, and it's as if another piece clicks into its place in the bigger whole.

Clara goes straight to the kitchen, making promises of lemon cake and raspberry tea, and whatever coffee she can find. Amy motions for the sofa inside and Cassie takes a seat, because Amy remembers being alone somewhere where you're the only thing out of place. Dawn moves into the kitchen because she knows what it's like to be overcrowded with people in a new house, and because she thinks she makes better coffee than Clara. Caroline moves from place to place, always restless and always wanting to keep everything in check, and ends up nowhere, instead silently checking in on everyone. 

"I met Care and Dawn years ago, after I stopped traveling around. They met even earlier, but I'm sure Dawn or Care can tell you the story better than I can," Amy says, after a while, because saying very important stuff sems weird when this girl is new and freshly arrived, but saying unimportant stuff seems even weirder, because this girl is new and freshly arrived.

"Yes, we'll bore you later with our stories" Caroline says and finally stops moving, sitting on the floor next to where Amy's sititng, and leaning against Amy's knees. Dawn and Clara come from the kitchen, Clara carrying lemoncake and tea on a huge wooden tray, and Dawn's carrying coffee for herself and Cassie.

It's not an easy story to tell, and these conditions are less than perfect, but Cass tells it anyway, and by the end of the story, she's already Cass to them. 

"I died," Cassie opens the story, and everyone's amazingly chill about it, really.

"Are you alive now?" Caroline asks, and it's almost imperceptible that she spent some time in her past wondering this same thing about herself.

"Oh, she's not a vampire," Dawn says, because she knows what Caroline's thinking, and it helps sometimes, to have someone say your thoughts out loud.

"It's always gotta be vampires with you two," Amy says and shares a look with Clara. There's four of them, most of the time, but no one can be with other people for the entirety of their existence, so sometimes it's up to four of them, but not four exactly.

"It's always aliens with you," Dawn responds, though no one expected a response. She sticks out her tongue for added measure, and Clara laughs.

"I was supposed to die, and I did, I just came back," Cass finishes. She tells a longer version of the story later on, but that's a story of her life, and now she's sharing the story of her death, and those aren't the same, or they aren't the same yet.

"Willow's not sure why I came back, and I'll probably have to go back to her at some point, she wants to see if she can figure it out," Cass adds, matter-of-factly, like it's not a death story.

(She fits in already, everyone is thinking. She fits.) 

Cass tells the the story of her death with many interruptions. Dawn adds absolutely irrelevant but interesting background information about a boy that Cass mentions. Caroline asks important questions about the past events, and Clara asks important questions about the future. Amy wonders where Cass is going to sleep, and if Cass wants to notify anyone outside of them four.

"She's staying with us," Dawn says, and it doesn't really need to be said, but Dawn says it anyway, and Cass looks at all of them like they're pulling down stars from the sky, and not offering a pull-out sofa.

The story of Cass's death is important, yes, and it gets retold on occasion when it's useful or convenient to do so. What's more hard to retell later is this: 

Magic can be many things. It is warm like pie when Cass reheats it while she teases Clara over making so many pies, and like the blanket that Dawn puts over Amy and Caroline while they're watching Riverdale, because they're the only two ones still watching, Caroline's head on Amy's shoulder, touching to keep warm. Clara makes numerous Cassandra references over the years, and they forget about most of them, but the first time Amy makes one, Dawn mock-gasps and doesn't let Amy live it down. Cass laughs at the scene, and Caroline suggests they do a name analysis thing sometime, and she really hopes there's a mythological Caroline that'll be awesome, and Clara says something cheesy, like _we already have a mythological Caroline that's awesome_ , and then everyone's both laughing and agreeing. They're a tangle of women, and is a tangle of women should be, it's messy, and sometimes sad, and kind and cruel and everything in between.

Beyond all else, what they are is alive, with the scars and memories to prove it, and more of both yet on the way.


End file.
